To --

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]



1.
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair                                         _5
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
2.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not                                             _10
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,--
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar                                       _15
From the sphere of our sorrow?
***

TO --.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.
There is a Boscombe manuscript.]
1.
When passion's trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last,
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep!                                _5
2.
It were enough to feel, to see,
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest--and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been,                               _10
3.
After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove,
And sky and sea, but two, which move
And form all others, life and love.                                  _15

NOTE:
_15 form Boscombe manuscript; for editions 1824, 1839.